Find Me

Shades Of You

There are days when I wish that I was born into a different universe. Not a different body, not a different life, but a different universe.

One where I wouldn't have to lose the colors of the world once I found the love of my life.

I do look forward to meeting my soulmate — whoever this mysterious person is that fate decided would be perfect for me — but just not as much as other people. There's a certain fear that I carry with me every single day that tightens its hold on me whenever I pass by a new face on the street. My heart skips a beat whenever a stranger comes my way, as I expect my world to lose all their colors when they make eye contact with me, leaving only black and white and shades of gray. But every time I expect that to happen, it doesn't. Much to my relief and my chagrin. Because no matter what I do or how hard I hope, I know that there is no escaping fate.

I do look forward to meeting my soulmate. I want to know how it feels when you've found your home in a such a vast world with no edges. I just wish I wouldn't have to lose the pastels of the sunrise, the blue hues of the sea, and the blood red of the roses in the process.

My life revolved around art, in seeing beauty in every moment, every corner, every detail. Art saved me when I had nothing else.

Where was my soulmate when I was near the edge of the abyss?

       — ❦  

Down the drain went the water I poured out of my mug, murky with the blue that I had used to finish a painting. It had taken me three days to finish a painting of the skies and the ocean at the end of the world that when I finally finished it this morning, my eyes decided that they had grown tired of the color blue for the time being. So I decided that, for today, I would be using a different color for a different subject entirely.

Carmine, rosewood, terra cotta, and vermilion are the shades of red that I gather from my acrylic paint before I find my place on the windowsill, the sunshine painting a nice spot for me to work on.

Inspiration does not come to me fast as I just climbed out of bed an hour ago, just right after several minutes of staring at the ceiling. Inspiration hasn't been coming to me as easily as it did before, for these past few weeks. The drive is absent when I place my brush on the canvas, hand and fingers unwilling to move due to a lack of subject. Around me, soft rays of the sun slowly begin to invade more of the space of my studio. A sigh escape my lips; I don't want to let the day pass without doing something productive.

A previous portrait meets my eye, leaning against the wall opposite me. A boy with blue eyes and blond hair stares straight back at me as I rest my gaze on the pastel painting, and last week's dream come back to me in waves. A dream in which I met the boy with blue eyes and blond hair, and how I woke up the next morning to paint him in every vivid detail I could remember.

But then the painting changes before me, and blue eyes become green orbs with specks of brown. Blond waves grow to wild curls, reaching past the shoulders as they blaze a fiery red. Freckles appear on the fair skin of the nose and cheeks, and the facial features shift to softer, feminine ones.

I glance at the shades of red by my side as my mind begins to fill in the rest of the details of my new subject. Once I'm done blending different shades until I'm satisfied with the color I wished to start with, I let my hand drive itself across the canvas, finally alive with the spark it needed.

Not for the first time, I begin to paint another one of my countless imaginings of what my soulmate could look like. After all, curiosity was something even I couldn't fight against.

       — ❦  

It is one in the afternoon when I decide to stop from my current pursuit of a proper painting. I'm parched by the time I put down my paintbrush, my concentration broken by the dryness in my throat. It is one in the afternoon when I decide to leave my place in pursuit of a proper drink.